Possibly one of the most visually striking films to emerge from the 20th century, Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) shows an iconic envisioning of a futuristic city where towering biblical structures packed with opulent art-deco design elements and fantastically elevated streets hide a dystopian underbelly of suffering workers toiling in a hellish landscape of machinery below the ground.
Prior to watching the film, I knew that many films had referenced the architecture of the city in Metropolis for their set designs but I did not realize the full scope of the claim until I saw the opening and recognized the familiar sequences in many modern film visuals. Perhaps my favourite reference to it was in the recent Netflix fantasy comedy animation "Disenchantment", where the characters journey into a steampunk city. I believe the animation's choice in lifting from Metropolis' designs was to convey that although the city seemed advanced and fantastical on the surface, the story within the city and in fact the city itself would later reveal themselves to have much more sinister plots in store.
I think that as "Steampunk" develops as a modern storytelling aesthetic, we will continue to see loving nods to the film that sparked so many new imaginative stories for generations to come.
Opmerkingen